If you are part of the labor, and you pay yourself for your work: that’s $14.52 per 30 minutes, or almost $30 per hour in profit.

In a perfect world, you could get away with charging less (maybe $32 or even $30), but if you really want to make money in this business, you should aim to be a premium business:

Premium quality work

Premium customer service

Premium PRICES

This is the same approach you should take with ALL of your services.

Your Prices vs. Your Competitors’ (and Why You Can’t Copy Them)

This is how most clueless lawn care owners price:

They find out what their competitors charge.

Then, they undercut them. That is a TERRIBLE idea for 3 reasons:

It drives down the market, which makes your work less profitable

You will eventually price too low and run yourself out of business

But the third reason is the most interesting . . .

Stanford scientists performed a study on Pricing. (The study focused on Wine, but it’s very relevant to the lawn care and landscaping industry.)

Two glasses of wine were placed out in front of the study participants:

One had a $5 label

The other had $45

Every time, the participants preferred the taste of the $45 wine. And every time, they said they would be more likely to purchase the $45 wine.

What they didn’t know was that the two wines… were the same.

Let this be a lesson to you: if you are the cheapest guy on the block, clients will be LESS LIKELY to buy from you.

Aim to be the premium lawn care provider in your Market. You will charge more, but you will also do a much better job.

Everyone will agree you are the best.

The Best Way to Track Time

Hopefully, you understand the importance of tracking time…

…because it is the only way to guarantee you make a profit on every job. Otherwise, you risk doing work for FREE.

Example: You charge 35$ for one man hour of mowing. That gives you $8.89 in profit.

However, what if your two-man crew is slow to reach the property? + 20 minutes.

What if the property has an tricky backyard, with delicate flowers and a small ditch in the back? +20 minutes.

Small time delays add up. If your two-man crew goes twenty minutes over, you lose 40 minutes of billable time. That shrinks your profit from ~$9 dollars to almost ZERO.

A waste of time will always cost you.

If you track time, you can guarantee that your services are always profitable. We highly recommend you use time tracking software to keep you and your employees accountable.

With Service Autopilot’s Mobile App, time tracking is simple. You can record Drive Time, non-billable hours, and Billable hours all in one tap. Most importantly, it guarantees you will make more profit on every job you perform.